Global Change Essay -- Environmental Biology Science Essays

Global Change Introduction: Global Change is a new mutli-disciplinary science which seeks to understand the various ways the environment is being altered by man's activities. The mechanisms of change are referred to as anthropogenic forcings and are usually involved with atmospheric alteration or land-use changes. The atmosphere is being altered by the addition of many chemicals including carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur compounds, halogen compounds and various aerosols. Land-use changes include habitat fragmentation, conversion to agricultural uses and biome conversion from introduced exotic species. As the human population continues to expand it puts increasing pressure on ecosystem services (Cairns, 1996). Ecosystem services are those benefits man derives from the natural world including air and water of a composition which promotes health, soil and nutrients in which to grow food, plants to convert sunlight into energy and an atmosphere which provides livable climate conditions. Global Change rese arch attempts to quantify and understand these processes and how human activities may alter them. Current research programs are being conducted by the National Science Foundation, the United Nations, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Project (Walker, 1994), the World Wildlife Fund for Nature and many other nations and international organizations. Atmospheric Change Global Warming One of the most heated debates on global change is the possibility of global warming. The first hints of global warming came from David Keeling's Mauna Loa Observatory carbon dioxide data which showed repeated yearly fluctuations and a definite upward trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (Graedel, 1993). Since then... .../www.lib.utexas.edu:80:/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/ Map_collection.html 7. Sustainable Development http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/sustvl.html 8. Environment Today http://enviro.mond.org/ 9. National Biological Survey http://www.im.nbs.gov/ 10. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/ 11. National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ncdc.html 12. United Nations International Panel on Climate Change http://www.unep.ch/ipcc/ipcc- O.html 13. Global Change Master Directory http://www.gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 14. U.S. D.O.E. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ 15. The Nature Conservancy http://www.tnc.org/ 16. EPA Global Warming Page http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/home.htm 17. United Nations Global Environment Outlook 1997 http://www.grid.unep.ch/geol/